December 31, 2009

Good Morning!Kinda hurts that Managarm beat me to it, but hey at least i got some info right from the table top!I managed to lure some of the guys who started to play with me in 2nd and 3rd Edition into the mancave, and get 2 games in with the new Nids codex. Yes i have a copy. No you cant have it. But as always, google is your friend. ;)

So we sat down, each of us made an army and then we faced a randomized opponent. I played Black Templars first and then Space Wolves in the "winners bracket".

I had to face, Land Raiders, Ragnar, Canis and tons of 3+ armor saves and armor.

So heres what i used:Tyrant

3 Zoantrophes in Capsule

Deathleaper

3 Hiveguard

2 Tervigons

2x20 Termagaunts

3 Warriors

Mawloc

Carnifex in Capsule

With this i had 5 scoring units and the ability to generate even more. Lucky me i had to play loot counters both times....guess its just me. ;) How does it work? Keep everything in reserve, come in on 3+ or 2+ depending if the Liktor has showed up, autoenter on turn 3. Lots of fun. The army lacks focus and i guess i could make a tougher one. But it had most of the units i wanted to try out.

So how did the units do? Well let me first say one thing, Mawlocs rock! They are awesome, if your enemy has foot units on the field, they will cry. Light armor? Still gets hit from behind with st6. And if your opponent shoots at the Mawloc, he does not shoot at anything else. And if you survive you can always charge into something or burrow again. AWESOME! He was absolute devasting in my second game, killed 4 fenris wolves and the wolves ran of the board taking Canis with them! He also killed like 10 or so more Space wolves. He didnt killed a single marine in my first game though, deviated all over the place.

The Tyrant is ok. He costs A LOT but he is worth it, IF you play a army list which makes use of his abilities. If all you want is a cc unit, go with Alpha Warriors. I used him with Insight, which grants me +1 on my reserves. Other then that, lash and sword is nice, heavy venomcannon is ok.

The Zoantrophes, did their job in the first game. They killed the Black Templars Land raider. Died when they got charged and the capsule killed some more marines and then died when it got charged. They failed in the second game, where they just tore off a lascannon. And then got killed by Ragnar and friends. They are good, and i will use at least 1 unit in every army, st10 ap1 lance is just to good to miss.

Deathleaper, he didnt do much. Killed a few marines and immobilized a rhino. Hes in the list for another +1 on reserves and for his funny special rules. W3 malus on a opponents character model is fun, even more if its a psyker. And i mean come on Deathleaper, awesome name! ;) Stelek from www.yesthetruthhurts.com put me onto this one.

The Hiveguards are good, st8 shooting which does not need los is always good. They didnt do much in both games, just walked around and shot stuff. Ill guess that´s what they do.

Termagaunts you need them. They are cheap, they shot, they score and they can kill marines in cc with roids and poison from the Tervigons. Well and for each unit you can take a Tervigon as scoring unit.

The warriors managed to avoid action most of the time. They did shoot a few times, they got shot with lascannons alot and died. Didnt saw cc action, but i reckon they rock if they get there. Energy weapons which can autokill? Yes please!

Tervigons are good, really good. The option on a t6, w6, 3+, fnp, MC which is scoring, is too good to pass. I like them, i will use them, but not more then 2. They are not cheap by any means, but the ability to spawn more Termagaunts, boosting their power and tossing around feel no pain is worth the points to me. One always managed to spend their Termagaunts in one go and the other always spawned tons.

The Fex is still good, although he does get really pricey, really quick. Put him in a capsule, shock him, shoot, hope to survive and then run him into cc. Worked quite good for me.

Ah one last word on the capsules, they are really nice. I always liked the fluff on these and i think that its high time nids get some decent shock options. They can kill stuff with shooting and cc, are autokillable, but cheap. I think over on www.chainfist.com there is a cheap option, how to get some "eggs".

So let me conclude that i like the new Nids, a lot. The codex plays totally different from the last one and i feel it has a lot of options for fiendly games. It might not be the best for tournament players, but i will totally crush foot lists. If your not mounted up, you will die, thats what i learned from my first two games. Hopefully ill get some more in, in the next days.

So with that i wish you all the best in 2010 and a nice new years party. Ill head over to the kitchen and prepare everything for my birthday party!

December 30, 2009

Over the christmas days I had the chance to take a thorough look through the new tyranid codex. And as I had enough time to do so, I can remember most of the points cost pretty well. Usually I don’t put much effort into list building without haven’t seen the codex and estimated costs solely based on guess-work. But now, with a much more solid background, I played around a lot with some ideas I have for my own swarm. On the first look the codex leaves behind a rather good “feeling”, so to say. At a first glimpse, I haven’t seen a unit which seems too overpower/underpowered by itself. But surely it’s too early to say something definite and time will tell what combinations of which units will raise the cries for cheese. Only things I am somewhat disappointed are the new pyrovores, genestealers and carnifices. Those are not bad at all, but in comparison to other units they are a bit weak. But enough of that, here are some ideas for my list I am intending to build and play. Mind that I have seen the German version of the codex, so some names might seem odd.

HQ:
- Hive Tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, “tactical instinct”, 3 tyrant guards
I think a swarm should be led by a hive tyrant and as he will be footslogging he needs the guards. Expensive, but a hard nut to crack, a beast in close combat and I think some pretty needed anti tank capability.

Elites:
- 3 Zoanthropes
I always liked the models and the idea of bloated brains flying around and causing some serious headaches somehow appeals to me. And strength 10 ap1 lances are even more appealing. Sadly they are a single unit now, you cannot field them independently.

Troops:
- 3 warriors with 2 sets of scything talons each
- 3 warriors with death spitters or scything talons, too. Not sure right now.
It seems necessary to take more warriors now simply to keep the swarm under synapse control. And I like the models. Strength 8 will be the bane for this unit though. Against the Imperial Guard they will die quickly I guess. Maybe these 2 small units are not enough. But we'll see

- 2x20 hormagaunts with toxin sacs
Fast, cheap (with this loadout one gaunt costs the same like one kroot) and they pack some serious punch with wounding everything on 4+. And I think they can be left outside the synapse as you want them charging one way or the other. On the negative side: no chance against vehicles or walkers.

- 2x20 termagaunts with fleshborers
Very cheap , adds to the horde feeling the 'nids should have in my eyes.

- 10 genestealers with 1 additional broodlord
Actually I am not sure about this unit. I always feared the stealers and had prayed Clausewitz never fielded a broodlord in the past. To be honest they got hit with the nerf-stick more than necessary in my eyes. The downgrading of rending did that sufficiently to the stealers and the loss of inhuman strength does not make the broodlord more attractive either. But outflanking stealers are no bad idea at all and the Space Hulk broodlord is too nice to be left in the box. I definitely will give them a try.

Heavy support:
- Trygon Alpha with regeneration
The stats of this pal are just great and with 6 wounds I think the regeneration could actually do something good. And another monstrous synapse creature with shadow in the warp isn't bad either. Expensive creature nonetheless (costs like a land raider with multi-melta).

- Trygon with regeneration
Same like above, even without the synapse thing. And with the +1 on reserves (granted by tactical instinct of the tyrant) those buddies are likely to appear early in the game. Have fun with those two in your line.

And that's it yet at a 2000 point level. The big bugs cost their fair share now. But with more than 100 bugs on the field it's pretty cool I think. One weakness I see is the limited anti tank power I have in this list as nearly the whole troops section can't do anything against vehicles. At the moment it is up to the hive tyrant and the brain bugs. Maybe it is necessary to field hive guards. Fluff-wise they are meant to guard brood nests and spore chimneys and all those strange "buildings" but it seems it could be worthwhile to take them. They are relatively cheap and 2 strength 8 shots whithout the need for line of sight and on a tough ballistic skill 4 creature is nothing to make fun of.

So these are just my initial thoughts and it is far from finished. I would like to add some gargoyles with the special character (parasite of Mortrex?) and some raveners. And a brood of three carnifices as screamer-killers is something I'd like to try out. I could go on and on this way as the codex has soo many nice units which not only look great but seem to have some nice rules.

In summary I think this codex will bring a lot of fun as I dare to say there will be more than just one or two "viable" lists. The new creatures, and by that I don't mean only the so beloved tervigon, seem to be very interesting. Another interesting thing will be to keep everything in synapse range, especially as the warriors are a bit more fragile now.

Currently on the painting table are a hive tyrant, 2 guards and 1 zoanthrope (Santa Clause was nice this year...). The old gaunt box is still unopened. I'll keep you updated on this.

December 11, 2009

with all the high expectations on the new Tyranids codex (which will be really great I´m sure) I like to just give a very short update on the last finished model of my Chaos Daemons army. I already possess a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch that was build from the original CSM Prince set. For the Slaanesh part of my army I decided to do a completely different approach to add the Prince. Because the original model lucks a little to bulky and not really fitting to the agile but nimble followers of the Prince of Pleasures, I used the Deceiver model as a base. I have seen this several times now and always like the arrogant look and the really nice posing of the model. With few additions (basically the Dark Pegasi wings and an Icon of Slaanesh from the Daemonettes pack) the model was finished quite quickly. So here is the pic :

December 8, 2009

well if you check the net these days you will find the rumours about the new Nids codex is all the rage. The rumours run strife and everyone seems to have a inside intel on what to expect in the new Nids codex. Even Managarm fell in love with the Hive Mind. ;)

Question is, will it REALLY change, that much?

Trying to find out more, I recently visited the german GW headquarter and had a nice chat with the guys there, and while they weren't allowed to tell me hard facts on the codex, they were pretty clear bout a few things.

Nid standards will be able to kill transports, semi reliable

You will still be able to play Nidzilla, most likely it will be even better then before

Warriors will be worth bringing now

Nids might be even more dangerous in CC now

You will get more reliable AT power

More hordish feel, standards will be cheaper

We really talked about alot of other stuff, but these are the points they were allowed to confirm. Except for the Trygon ofc, everyones new favourite monster.

So what do we take home from this?

Nidzilla wont die, some people already screamed doom from the rooftops. Others feared after the statement of a certain GW guy, that Nids will bring even more MC´s. But for non-Apoc games, I feel you wont be able to afford that much more then the usual amount of MC´s. And lets face it 8 MC´s is hard enough, if your army can deal with them your army can deal with 2 more.

The main problem will be the increased amount of standards + better CC + better AT. I reckon most Zilla players will just improve on their standards and get some better AT for their MC´s. When the cheaper standards can kill tansports reliably, mech will be in some problems. We gonna have Nidzilla v2.0.

Depending on the amount of AT on the warriors, we gonna see some warrior heavy armies, but I'm still not sure about this one. Because if they don't get an improved a statline, I look at you 4+ armor save, they still die to anti-infantry fire.

What really floats my boat are the improved standards, if the rumoured point values aren't that much of. Its gonna be a pain painting all of them, but then you can finally play the Nids as they supposed to be played and be competetive.

Unluckily for all us Nid fans the new codex is postponed to the middle of Jan, due to some misprinting issues. So I guess well see how it will work out. Good for you guys, now that Managarm decided to jump on the Nidwaggon, we gonna see some nicely painted bugs. And perhaps I get myself to finish up on my old school 2nd edition models. Then we can have some sort of Darwin battle! Survival of the ugliest and badest bug in town! At least I got some Biovores and Zoans ready, following GW´s normal strategy, they gonna be good in the new codex.

December 6, 2009

I was considering to start a new army for a while now and as I have two more or less shooty armies with Marines and Tau I wanted an army for close combat. My initial thoughts went in the direction of Khorne Daemons with the possibility to add World Eater Marines later for a mixed chaos army. But that would mean to paint marines again and after having painted about 6000 points worth of loyalist marines I wasn't too eager about that. And a not too unimportant point was to start a more organic army with some kind of monstrous creatures (daemons would fit those criteria as well) where I could use techniques as washing and dry brushing to get some nice results quickly. To make long things short (actually I am thinking about that since early summer) I decided to start Tyranids. And as the rumours got more solid that the bugs would get a new codex in 2010 I was definetely signed in.
So lately I got myself the last battle force at my FLGS and the last box of gaunts on top of it. And so after the tournament was over I started painting. But oh my, what colour scheme would be nice? After a long process of trying different things with old gaunts Clausewitz left at my site years ago and playing around with the army painter in DoW II, I decided to do something similar to the colouration done in Imperial Army IV: The Anphelion Project. It's a grey-ish, boney body with green or brown carapace. So take a look at my version of it:

Hormagaunts

Warriors

Carnifex

The "swarm"

As you can see I have nothing shooty yet. And that's the way I want to go, a close combat heavy army with lots of bugs. As I want to play a horde-style army, I had to find a colour scheme which is easy and quick to paint. The base colour is bleached bone, the carapax is painted with knarloc green. Then everything gets a wash with thinned devlan mud, then again bleached bone dry-brushed over the body. The red edges are done with terracotta. Finally the carapax gets a coat of gloss varnish. I think they get a more organic feeling that way. That's it for the little critters, the bigger bugs get a bit more attention and so the green parts get more washing steps with ogryn flesh/devlan mud mix and thraka green. And I highlighted the terracotta parts with uneven brush strokes of blood red.

So that's it for the moment. Left on the painting table are 8 gaunts with fleshborers and 4 genestealers (assembled), 8 gaunts of both kinds and the remaining 4 stealers left in the box. After those are done, I think it's time for a hive tyrant and some tyrant guards. And I am really curious on the new plastic raveners and gargoyles.

November 23, 2009

After having received some serious pain in the last game, I was disturbed hearing that my next opponent was playing Space Wolves. I had seen several lists on the tourney that really gave me a headache (full of Thunder Wolves and Rune Priests). The last game was played with 5 objectives with long table edges as deployment zone, with my special objective being to keep one HQ and one troop choice alive. When he handed me his list I was kind of relieved that his list was quite “usual” with 3 Rhinos full of Grey Hunters (one with a Rune Priest inside) and a Drop pod loaded up with 4 Wolf Guard (combi melters). But most of his 1650 points were seated in his Land Raider Crusader that carried Ragnar Blackmane and a Killy Unit o´Doom of Wolf Guard (kitted out with everything) that really gave me a the shivers.

I won the roll to choose sides and allowed him to go first. He set up everything in one big wall of tanks and awaited my arrival. The Chaos Gods again decided to leave me with my second wave and I deepstruck them in serious distance to his units. My Soul Grinder deviated greatly taking him far into the open ready to be blown away by his melter drop pods. With almost shooting in this turn (with the exception to my flamers flaming his Rhinos destroying one Storm Bolter – whoot !) I awaited his counter strike. In his turn he drop podded the Wolf Guard next to my Soul Grinder and drove two of his Rhinos onto the objectives on his side of the table, while his Land Raider and the last Rhino speeded directly into my lines. He then started his shooting phase and went on a bad dice streak I haven´t seen like that for a long time. Of the 4 melters in the Wolf Guard unit only one hit the Soul Grinder, rolling snake eyes for penetration.

His Land Raider opened fire on my Chariot of Slaanesh dealing him only two wounds with hurricane bolters and assault cannon fire, while the two storm bolters on the Rhinos failed to even deal one wound to the flamers. In my turn everything I had in reserves arrived giving me a lot of confidence to take the upper hand in this game. I was able to destroy one of the Rhinos (housing the Rune Priest and 9 Grey Hunters) through shooting and my flamers started to chase one of his Rhinos across the map for 3 turns blowing of its storm bolter. In my assault phase the Fiends of Slaanesh nearly obliterated the Grey Hunters that left the Rhino with only one wound taken in return.

The Soul Grinder annihilated the 4 Wolf Guard next to the drop pod. So this was a real bad turn for him and this trend continued for the rest of the game. Ragnar Blackmane died in a two round combat against the Lord of Change without dealing a single wound and the big bad Wolf Guard unit inside the Land Raider proved to be two killy for its own good.
They destroyed the whole units of Fiends and stranded in the open ready to be blast away by all the shooty goodness I had. When the dust settled only two Wolf Guard had survived. His Land Raider was unable to destroy my Soul Grinder until it was to late and he was catched in assault, destroying the mighty tank. At the end all he had left was a single squad of 2 Grey Hunters, hiding behind the wreck of their Rhino. Had the game taken one more round I would have tabled him, not through good gaming, but due to his real bad luck. So I left the game with 16 tourney points and waited for the final scores.

Concluding Remarks

I left the game taking place 14 out of 27 with two wins and one loss. My goal was to win at least one game and I´m quite happy with the outcome. The Daemons proved to by better than I thought and was surprised how well they kept their ground against the armies in game 1 and 3 (I never want to talk about game 2 again…). Even though I only got my first wave in one of the games and my deepstriking results were quite unfortunate, I never had the feeling of this "completly random" - feeling thats often criticized about Daemons. There wasn´t a real "Model of the Tourney" but the Soul Grinder really suprised me in a positive way by taking an incredible amount of punsihment in all games (in contrast to many of our normal games, where he just was destroyed in the first turn after deep striking).
As real positive suprise my Daemons also won me the "Best Painted" award at the end of the day, making the whole tourney a really pleasing experience that I like to repeat in the future.

With the first game being a very narrow win, I was in a good mood for my second game. The second game was holding table quarters and my special objective was killing the enemy’s most expensive elite unit. My opponent played space marines and has he handed me his list, I was starting to feel a sort of panic. 10 Terminators with a Null Zone Librarian (most expensive elite unit … ouch), a Land Raider Crusader (full of Assault Terminators and a Thunderfire Cannon. The list was completed by two Rhinos with Space Marines and a small five man squad of scouts.

Game started quite bad with me loosing the role to go first. My opponent handed me the first turn and to add insult to injury my second wave decided to come first, leaving me with no shooting to destroy his Thunderfire Cannon of Doom. It all went downhill from there with me learning that a +5 invulnerable save that’s rerolled due to Null Zone doesn’t allow much room for soaking a turn of firepower from any unit. The Thunderfire Cannon destroyed one unit of Demonettes and the Horrors in its first two turns of shooting with me not even denting it.

After 4 turns all I had left, were 15 Demonettes hiding behind a building on the far side of the battle field, hoping to at least keep me one quarter. Of course the game went on until round 7 allowing my opponent to also wipe my last unit and thus giving him a solid massacre with 20 tourney points for him and a uncomforting 0 for me. All my kills in this game counted up to a whooping 4 scouts and a immobilised Rhino. Well at least I learned why Fatecrusher lists are so abundant in tourney environments…

This being the first game on my first tourney I was really nervous about the army my Daemons will meet. When the games were called I was partly relieved partly terrified to hear that I´m going to have to take on the Imperial Guard. I´ve played Guard before so I knew some of their tricks but I also knew, that they have a lot of evil tricks upon their sleeve that can hurt Daemons badly (I´m looking at you, Officer of the Fleet). Big blocks of chimeras also really scare me, because they really take a lot of firepower to get to their juicy inside and that´s exactly what my Daemons can´t dish out.

My opponents list consisted of 3 Leman russ,a basilisk, a Thunderer (basically a Imperial Guard Vindicator sourced from FW´s Imperial Armour), a Command Squad in a Chimera (kitted out with Master of Ordnance, bodyguards and Officer of the Fleet [here we go - 5+ for reserves]) and loads of footslogging infantry.

We played Capture and Control (One objective in each deployment zone) with Dawn of War setup. My special objective for this mission was to get one troop choice into one of the terrain features in his deployment zone – quite a good one for Daemons because that´s exactly where I´m going. Terrain featured a big AV14 bunker on one side and several ruined buildings on the other with some craters and trenches in between. I won the roll to go first and let him go first. He chose the side with the bunker and deployed everything he had during his turn. In my turn I got lucky and my first wave struck all over the place. I won´t go into turn by turn details but the game was very close with a lot of loses (my Demon Prince and the Lord of Change soaked many, many shots but where both sent back to the warp) for me in first turns against the overwhelming firepower of the Imperial Guard. I slowly munched through his right flank and the Officer of the Fleet proved to be more of bonus then a hindrance. Most of my unit deepstruck in later turns directly into his right flank where the bunker shielded me from much of his firepower, while my horrors held my own objective against a hell lot of fire. I was able to contest his objective with my Soul Grinder, who proved to be the absolute Monster of the Match by killing the Leman Russ squadron and absorbing 2 turns of incredible amounts of firepower without a scratch.

So I won with 1 objective to 0 but hadn´t it been for the additional victory points I collected for holding one terrain feature in his deployment zone, I would have lost by about 200 victory points in the secondary. With the 300 points for the special objective I luckily left the game with around +100 victory points (draw) and 14 tourney points for the one objective I was in the lead.

November 19, 2009

So the Tau got tabled in Round 1, almost tabled their opponent in Round 2. And went into the 3rd Round game with mixed feeling, who would it be? Funny enough it was the same guy that the demons had to face in Round 1.

3rd game: Imperial Guard

Pitched battle, seize ground (5 objectives)

I cant’t remember the exact list as I am not familiar with guard lists. I remember:

Again I lost the roll to decide whether to go first or second and he decided to start. I would have done the same. He deployed everything evenly stretched over his table half with the basilisk, heavy weapons team and leman russ squadron on the flank to my left and the thunderer on the other side. The sentinels would be outflanking. As it turned out I missed that he said that and completely forgot about them.

I was a bit unsure of what to deploy and what to put into reserves. As it was an objective based mission I held my troop choices back of course, the kroot would make a flank march. I decided to place the broadsides in the highest ruin in my deployment zone with one model in each storey so that his numerous pie-plates wouldn’t do so much harm with one hit. The hammerhead was placed on the other side on my right flank behind some cover. But as every ruin in my zone was too small to hide a tank it would be targetable from at least one lascannon/missile launcher and of course from my big concern the basilisk. As the hits on side armour with strength 9 would bring me into serious trouble, I placed the death rains next to the broadsides out of line of sight so that they could jump-shoot-jump and hopefully kill the artillery tank and maybe could target the heavy weapons team later on. The ionhead would be pretty much useless this game so I decided to use it as kind of a bait or flying cover and placed it in the middle of my deployment zone. I didn’t really know what to do with my fire knives so I placed them there too, to take some shots at the heavy weapons. My command squad would be deep striking.

So I can’t remember how each turn went on in detail. First turn of his shooting made my fire knife team lose their morale seeing one of their precious shield drones destroyed so they decided to cut and run. Cowards. Another shield drone of the broadsides was destroyed but they bravely held their ground.
On my turn I destroyed the basilisk as planned but just managed to stun one of the leman russ and destroy the battle cannon of the same. Very short turn.

And then my luck turned on me. The remaining gun drone of the broadsides was destroyed and I rolled double 6s for the morale check and again double 6s for the retreating distance so my broadsides fled from the battlefield. In addition the railgun on the hammerhead was smashed. So stripped of any kind of anti-tank capability I faced a forlorn battle as I couldn’t do much against armour 14.

So in the remaining turns my kroot outflanked and killed the heavy weapons team and another 10 men squad before being killed by an overwhelming number of guardsmen.

I risked deep striking my commander and retinue behind the thunderer and was awarded by its destruction.

The sentinels I forgot appeared behind my incapacitated hammerhead and immobilized it before being destroyed by the ionhead and deathrains.

I charged my command squad into the two squads on the right flank and tried to kill at least one of it and thereby pulling them from the objective they held until then but failing a lot of armour saves and rolling high for morale and then low for the initiative test didn’t help much. The commander and his remaining bodyguard were overrun. In the end I managed to kill enough of this squad with smart missiles of the crashed railhead so that they had to fall back and couldn’t claim that obejective. My firewarriors never disembarked and their transports armours couldn’t be penetrated by a lot of shelling so I held one of my own objective and contested the other one which was in turn contested by the leman russ’es. I lost 1 to 2 and a lot of victory points. My secret objective was to brake one of his squads in close combat so that that squad would run away from the table. Ridiculously hard to achieve with tau. But funnily my opponent didn’t achieve his objective too. He had to destroy my most expensive tank, the railhead, which was immobilized and stripped of all weapons but not destroyed! Yeehaw ;-)

So coming to the end I want to thank my opponents for mostly very nice and smooth games and of course to all who made this tournament possible.

Conclusion:

So what do I think of my army performing in a tournament. Considering that I didn’t face only tournament-streamlined armies I am very happy with the overall performance. Against the Chaos list there isn’t much I could have done. I am not sure if a list like this could be beaten with tau, at least not with my army composition and experience. My second opponent’s list wasn’t really a challenge and marines in the open are no match against 5 plasma rifles, an ion cannon and a lot of strength 5 shots. And my last game was more a case of bad luck than of anything else. I think that I could have got at least a draw when all my railguns wouldn’t have been destroyed so early.

I think it was the right choice to take the ion cannon armed hammerhead instead of the skyray and I’ll be fielding it again in future games, at least at these point levels. At more points I might consider taking a second railhead. Another option of course is to take 3 broadsides and both hammerhead variants. I have to try this some day. And I have to emphasize the kroot. They are so great I really really recommend taking them. They give such a great versatility either by being just a cheap meat shield or by outflanking and thereby offering the opportunity to threaten the enemy’s flank. And of course they are the only choice which has something like close combat abilities. And they are scoring.

One thing which was of a concern is that a unit consisting of 2 suits and 2 shield drones have to take a morale check when one drone goes down. And that is really annoying when your precious unit flees the field of battle just because their silly drone is a smoking wreck and they are. I thought, that’s the purpose of the shield drones. A unit of 3 suits and 2 drones should be better as it would take 2 destroyed drones to force the morale check. So that’s something I am going to change.

This game was in every way the opposite of the first game and the guy I played against was very nice and a good sport.

I faced a more or less foot slogging marine army with a lot of bodies and every single unit could hold one table quarter as everything was scoring. He chose to deploy and go first and set up everything close to the middle so that his units could walk into every quarter first turn with the land raider, vindicator and land speeder coming to my quarter.

I was a bit impressed by so many marines so I decided to build a castle in my quarter with the broadsides standing on some kind of fortification with tanks and crisis suits behind that more or less out of line of sight.

As I only had 3 scoring units I decided to keep my fire warriors and the kroot in reserve with the latter outflanking. My bonus mission objective was to have more points of HQ on the table in the end so my commander would be in reserve as well.

First turn was as expected. He boosted the land speeder 24” towards my homebase and drove 12” with the land raider and vindicator, popping smoke. All marine units (all combat squadded) except the 2 lascannon dev-squad walked into the adjacent table quarters. The lascannons were the only ones able to shoot so they opened fire on my broadsides, killing one shield drone.
On my turn I jumped out of cover and opened fire. I thought my death rains could down the land speeder but I only managed to stun it. The hammerhead and the broadsides opened fire on the land raider but as the dark angels smoke launcher reduced every hit to glancing I only managed to shake it and destroy the assault cannon. The ionhead killed one or two marines of the lascannon dev-squad. In the end all suits jumped back behind the fortification.

In his second turn he continued to drive his tanks towards my little castle and his troops marched again. I don’t know why he did that, so he couldn’t fire one more turn and he even did not walk into cover (which was rare, admittedly), only the lascannons held their position. He fired the demolisher cannon at my broadsides but scattered a bit so I suffered only one wound which was saved by the shield drone. The railhead suffered one hit from a lascannon but the disruption pod negated any harm.
All railguns fired on the land raider and shook the crew, no immobilization, damn. The deathrains immobilized the speeder and destroyed the multimelta. But it still would contest my table quarter so it would take one more turn of fire to bring it down. I decided to start the push into another table quarter, so I jumped my fire knives not behind the fortification but towards the so far unclaimed quarter.

Third turn’s movement saw the land raider and vindicator continuing the push to my deployment zone and at last shooting from the marines. The demolisher shell scattered yet again and caused no damage. A few heavy bolter shells pinged off the armour of the broadsides and the lascannon weren’t able to damage the skimmers.

One devilfish and my commander arrived and I placed them to shoot at the marines in the table quarter to my right, the commander and bodyguards being able to jump behind cover in the assault phase. I destroyed the land raider with the hammerhead so the broadsides, the two fire knives and the ionhead fired on the disembarked death wing terminators, killing only one lightning claw armed one. The combined fire of the command squad and the devilfish killed 9(!) marines.

In his fourth turn he shot another gloriously scattering demolisher shell at my fire knives, killing none and the few bolter and heavy bolter rounds didn’t do anything as well. His terminators destroyed the shield drone of the death rains but weren’t out of assault range. I really started to feel sorry for him at this point.

On my fourth turn all remaining reserves arrived and the outflanking kroot showed up on my right hand side in charge range to the plasma cannon dev-squad. The ionhead fired at the side armour of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the fire knives killed the 5 men-squad in this table quarter. My commander used his target lock to kill the last remaining marine in front of the team and his bodyguards killed one of the devastators. The death wing terminators and the interrogator chaplain threatened my home base, so I fired everything I had at them, even the firewarriors disembarked to fire and the deathrains used their flamer. I killed everyone but one lightning claw terminator. I don’t know why he put a wound from a railgun on his chaplain. Maybe he thought the rosaries would save him. But it didn’t and the solid slug killed him instantly. The kroot charged the remaining four devastators and killed 2, losing 2 of their own. The death rains jumped in front of the firewarriors to protect them from getting charged by the last terminator.

In the remaining turns I killed the marines in his corner and all other marines on the table, wiping him out completely. In the end I only lost 3 shield drones and the death rains and 5 kroot.

I have to thank my opponent for a really kind and funny game, never losing his humour even when facing a massacre. And that made me feel a bit bad about tabling him in the end. But I think his list isn’t very suitable for a tournament environment. He mentioned he usually plays the double wing and I think that would be far better.

so i finally got around to post the battle reports the guys wrote up and put in some pictures. I promise I gonna get you the full army lists for each game as my stupid "online codex" program isn't working as it should!

So without further talking lets start with Managarm´s Report for his Round 1 game!

Managarm here, tuning in to report of my three games during the local tournament.

1st game: Chaos Space Marines

Dawn of War, capture and control

Army List:

2x Daemon prince with wings and lash,

3 chaos terminators

2x5 chaos marines with melta in rhino

5 chaos marines with melta in land raider with daemonic possession

3x3 obliterator

The standard “dual-lash-9-obliterator-I-win” list. Boring to play (in my oppinion) and boring to play against. And that was exactly how it turned out. I was a bit disappointed that I had to play my first tournament game against one of the hardest list one can field, but okay, let’s take it.

The guy I played knew what he was doing and had played a lot of tournaments so far. He won the roll to go first and did so. He placed one rhino with the side exactly at the middle line with daemon prince behind it (actually no daemon prince but a conversion from bits of the possessed and chaos spawns…so not the usual size for a monstrous creature...) and the other rhino behind some ruins in his deployment zone. I deployed nothing and kept the fire knife team in reserve to deepstrike later on, so he moved everything else on the board and the rhino and daemon prince further to my deployment zone.

I don’t want to go into too much detail as the game was not much fun to play. I made one mistake that I didn’t shoot at the daemon prince in my first turn. I don’t know why I did that. The remaining 5 turns consisted of jumping to me, lashing the suits to the daemon princes, killing them in my turn so I couldn’t shoot them and blasting the tanks to pieces with the obliterators. Rinse and repeat until no tau is left on the field. In combination with that this guy wasn’t very polite (re-measuring every second move I did is not something which makes me comfortable) and I made a mistake in close combat (I hit his prince on 4+ instead on 5+) which seemed to piss him off more than necessary I was glad when the game was over.

November 7, 2009

So just a qick one this evening. Just wanted to show the finished armies. Everything is packed up and ready for tomorrow and besides I am tired right now from playing, eating and drinking wine an whisky I am more than excited how my very first tournament is going to be.

November 3, 2009

I am very busy with getting everything painted until saturday. Currently I am working on the last crisis suit and the ion cannon for the hammerhead.
Just wanted to show you the latest additions, another fireknife suit and my second broadside:

Fireknife XV8

Broadside XV88 MkI

Nothing too specatacular, but I hope that the converted heads and the little re-posing of the arms and legs of the fireknife gives a bit more dynamic to this model.

The great conversion idea for the head can be found here at warhammer tau. Thanks to Adam again for nice ideas and inspiration.

Pictures of the 3 other suits I painted over the last weeks are due to follow and of course a family picture of the complete tournament army will be online at friday, so stay tuned!

November 2, 2009

sitting at work since 550am and nothing to do, i thought i start talking a bit bout the coming tournament and the plans we got.

As the tournament day draws closer, Trotzki and Managarm put the last finishing touches on their armies, id thought that this will be a show i dont wanna miss. So i decided to take the coming friday off and travel down. This will give us the opportunity to have a 3rd person doing all the coverage. The guys have time to focus more on playing and getting their asses kicked....and i will focus on doing the rest. Mainly waking them up in time for the event on saturday and get a constant supply on coffee going, cause the plan is to get terrible drunk on friday!

So I hope to get you the full coverage of the event! Pictures, Army Lists, Interviews! Althought Trotzki allready said "If you put a picture of me on the net im gonna skin your ass!", we will see how tough he is when I stand before him. ;)

We will put some last test games in on friday, mainly focusing on the missions for the tournament and getting into the right mindset.

So lets start my rumbling on the tournament with a quick look at the setting and then i will talk about the missions, the guys will have to play on saturday.There are 3 missions, point limit is 1650 and they got 2h15mins time for each one. I think that will work quite well. There will be 28 people playing, having 14 games played simultaneously, i hope i find the time to get more infos on the other people playing.The armies being played by the people attending are:

So we have 13 MEQ´s that gives the guys a good chance of playing MEQ´s , which would be their favourite enemy.2 Dark Eldar players, im really excited to see them, will they bring the infamous skimmer army of doom? I had a friend once who played DE when they just came out, we hated to play him back then. I would hate to play DE right now. Imo they just "break" the game, playing a different edition then anybody else.The 2 Space Wolves guys, i dont know. Did they have the time to bring the new toys, aka Thunderwolves? If so people are in for a hell of a game. If not they just Marines to me.3 CSM players, well i guess its a good guess that at least one will bring the "normal" CSM list, aka 2 lash´s, 3 plagues marines in rhinos and the rest of the points in kyborgs. The second highest rating player is playing chaos, im eager to have a chat with him, see how he feels about CSM in 5th edition.Nids, while i feel that nids are currently in need of a new codex, the guys playing Nids at the tourney are supposed to be "good", at least if you believe in their tournament rating. So maybe i see some great armies, which will motivate me for the new nid codex. If so, I will bring out the old 2nd edition models i got for a new spin!And we have 4 bandwagoneers, errr Imperial Guard players, will they bring "fluffy" armies, or will they bring the mech armies that the guards a infamous for atm? I just hope they spam melters and bounce off Trotzki´s invul save. Although he wont be able to do much against mech spam.In the end i just hope to see lots of really well painted armies and meet a fun bunch of people.

You can get a total of 20 points per mission, 14 for the primary and 6 for the secondary. You can get another 8 points total for having a well painted army and fully based army with lots of conversions. 2 points are given for submiting a correct army list until the dead line. This nets us a total of 70 points. I honestly believe the guys should at least get 7 points for their armies. But well see how the judges feel about that.

All missions have a primary and a secondary, which depends on good old victory points. As a nice twist, each player gets a secret tertiary objective, which adds a amount of victory points.First off is a "Headquarters" mission with "Dawn of War" unit placement, oh how i hate thee!Second along comes another old friend, table quarters! With "Spearhead" placement.Last is a 5 objective mission with placement along the long table edges.

So how do i think the missions will play out for our guys?Im not sure they can hold, their own base while making a substantial attack on their opponents one in the first mission. So we prolly gonna see some draws here.The second one will prolly see the Tau holding their own turf with, Kroot, Broadsides, Crisis and skimming around the edges with the other tanks. The Demons will drop all over the show, having to deal with an completely deep striking army is quite a pain for the enemy. The third one, well i would place 2 objectives together on my side, hold em and contest the rest. Really depends on the enemy.

So in conclussion i think, the demons will do better. Although i believe the Tau list is more solid, most people are just not used to play against demons. Happens to me all the time, when i play Trotzki, "What can this unit do? Fleet d6", charge 12" hit me with 7 rending attacks with str 5?" Funny stuff. If i would have to make a wild guess, id say our guys will both get 1 win and 2 draws. Managarm would prolly place better with his Marines but i understand that playing MEQ against MEQ all day is quite boring.

October 30, 2009

with just one week up to the local tourney I finally finished the last of the models needed for the games. I still had to paint four Fiends of Slaanesh and build and paint my Herald on Chariot (not that much, but you really learn how much time it takes to proper paint a model, when you have a fixed date it has to be finished on), when I decieded to register.The four Fiends of Slaanesh where quick to paint, because they already where assembled (not really fun). I used the same paint scheme, I used for all of the daemons.

So here is the pic :

Fiends of Slaanesh

Test games have really proven the worth of this fine unit, that is fast, hits hard and should not be ignored by your enemies units. In some games they died without doing much, but even when they just act as bullet magnet they have their worth. In some way they seem to be comparable with the Flamers of Tzeentch, with the big distinction that flamers do their damage when they deepstrike, with not much after that (they can but I just can´t remember when the last time was they really survived the next enemy turn without being bashed or shot). Fiends do no damage the turn they arrive but really whip units in the turns afterwards, with more resilence (you can deepstrike a lot more freely due to the large charge range) and more hitting power in later turns.

For the Herald I had to first reassemle the model. Parts used are mainly from the High Elf Chariot and the Daemonette Box, with the heads of the two draft animals originating from the Chaos Spawn Box (Great kit, useless models - hooray !). Painting was done part by part with an assembly of the finished chariot, rider and oxen at the end.

Here is he / she / it:

Herald of Slaanesh on Chariot

In all test games the chariot mostly showed its worth as a sort of Search & Destroy missile, that deepstruck, charged and .... well sometimes really messed up a unit and sometimes died an horrible death in - Slaanesh pleasing - agony. I still think it is a very useful unit (killed Njal in SW proxy test game) but its true worth is its ability to take a out small squads like marine combat squads or guardsmen units. Tough targets really break his neck quickly - even with 5 wounds and +4 armour save. Still the main thing that really make the Chariot of Slaaensh outstanding is its low cost, that allows you to field a quick mini-monstrous creature with Hit & Run for around 100 points.

October 26, 2009

silence dropped onto Bellum Aeternum for the last weeks due to too much work in real life. But now I have holidays and I spend my time with painting and considering army lists as the tournament is in less than two weeks. I have to paint 4 crisis suits and 1 broadside, 2 crisis are done and the broadside will be finished today.
Trotzki and me had some test games for training the last weeks and it seems I will have a hard time with my tau army at the tournament. I played the list I have posted earlier and it was a bit boring with 3 hammerheads, so I changed the heavy support choices for 2 broadsides, 1 hammerhead with railgun and a skyray. I had to drop 4 kroot for freeing points, so list is as follows:

We just managed to play two games. Sorry, no pictures as my camera does not work with empty batteries (who would have thought) and I had to proxy a few minis and that looks terrible.

The first game was against Trotzki's semi-mech eldar (exarch with jump generator, warp spiders, 2x10 guardians, 10 dire avenger in serpent, 6 harlequins in serpent, 6 fire dragons in falcon, wraithlord).
Very sad, very sad. We played with two objectives in the own deployment zone. Trotzki had everything in reserve, I kept everything in reserve but the broadsides and their kroot screen on my objective. On turn two nearly everything became available for the eldar and the tanks zoomed towards my deployment zone and the dice gods failed me yet again (or preferred Trotzki, as you wish) I managed to do absolutely nothing, not even a shaken result (2 hits, with immobilized and weapon destroyed on a serpent with cover save reduced to 6+ by markerlights. Passed.) To make long things short, I got outmanoeuvred and shot down and killed in close combat. I abandoned my home objective and tried to run for Trotzki's but I got smashed there too. I made a few mistakes to be honest. I placed my hammerhead next to the broadsides as it became available from reserve and that stripped me of my whole anti-tank capability after two turns. I won't do that again, lesson learned. But it's impossible to win against such a fast force like eldar when you are not able to bring their tanks down quickly. You get outmanoeuvred and wiped out by highly specialised units. And bad dice rolling does not help either.

Second game was against a more or less fun list of marines:
Librarian in terminator armour with vortex of doom and gate of infinity,
5 terminators with assault cannon,
dreadnought with multi melta and heavy flamer,
2x10 tactical marines with missile launcher and melta in drop pod,
10 assault marines with fist sergeant, 2 flamer,
land speeder with multi melta and heavy flamer,
land raider with extra armour,
predator annihilator with lascannon sponsons, extra armour

That was a close and funny game. It started very bad for me as I seem to be unable to have luck with dices, but that bad luck turned around and "lady average" showed up in the second part of the game. We played the same mission with the same deployment and I placed the broadsides and the kroot on my objective, the broadsides on the second level of a building and the fireknife unit behind that ruin. I split my force into two parts, one consisting of the deathrains, the hammerhead and one fish trying to get to his objective and the other part defending my home objective as I saw a chance to hold it. I kept the skyray in the middle of my table edge to lend marker light support where needed. I made one mistake as not knowing the rules properly. I charged two combat squads with my kroot and one of those with my command team, thinking I would kill the smaller combat squad with the commander and his bodyguard so that he is free again on my next turn. But as the rule for multiple combat resolutions says, they have to stay in contact with the other ongoing close combat. I really thought that would be the game deciding moment as the terminators were due to charge. But luck was on my side this time and I could win this fight and managed to bring the two remaining kroot between the terminators and my command team and on top of this one kroot survived the shooting by going to ground and never failing a morale check. So I could gun down the terminators and all 20 tactical marines. The force designated to capture Trotzki's objective was taken down by assault marines and the land speeder. After the dust had settled, one lone (and pinned) fire warrior hold my objective and I had won this game.

So having played a few games with my former list and two games with this list, I will be fielding broadsides with kroot as screening unit. A railhead will definitely be in it too. Yesterday I thought about the skyray and its role in this army. Not much dakka for the spent points, that's obvious. But are the two, in most cases the one markerlight hit worth it? In the first games against eldar it was useless, completely. In the second game the markerlights boosted the ballistic skill of the fireknife squad so that the terminators suffered more plasma and missile hits. In this case it was well worth it. As I won't be able to play a game this week I have to "theorycraft" another idea. I am considering a hammerhead with ioncannon. The list would be something like that:

By taking the cheaper Ionhead I now can take another bodyguard for the commander thereby getting another BS4 fireknife. So the need for markerlights becomes somewhat redundant. And I have a bit more dakka. I think that 3 str. 7 shots should help against monstrous creatures, light transports and of course against power armour.
The point is, I haven't much time left to playtest this list and I know that the ionhead does not appear in any list you find in forums or on blogs, the so called internet-wisdom seems to despise this version of the hammerhead. Maybe it is really so bad but I don't know, on paper it looks ok. Does someone have experience with it? What list would you prefer? (I know the first list is pretty mich the same as the one Adam from Warhammer Tau fields).

So far so good, that's it for the moment. I have to paint some battlesuits! Pics are to follow later this week.

So I kicked out the stealth team, stripped all tanks off the flechette dischargers and degraded the Shas'O to Shas'El and most important I added more fireknives to the list for better anti-MEQ capability. At the moment I run 3 railheads for I think I definitaly need them for anti-tank.
I had 2 games with this list last weekend. First game was against Trotzki's daemon list where we played annihilation. That ended as a draw. The railheads seemed to miss anything with their guns and Trotzki's soulgrinder moved around unharmed for a while and ate one flank for breakfast. Everything else performed averagely. I think I would have won if the game lasted longer than 5 turns. It was a solid game and we both were rather content with our lists.

Next game was against my marines which proxied a Vulcan list with 2 land raiders (1 redeemer, 1 normal), 2 squads of TH/SS terminators, 2 tac-squads with multi-melta and melta in drop pod and a land speeder with HF/MM. Again annihilation and dawn of war deployment where we both kept everything in reserve. That game was disastrous. I rolled abysmally for about anything. The dearly needed fireknives showed up on turn 5 and missed pretty well. The hammerheads again weren't able to harm anything (even drop pods!!! *argh*) and I don't need to talk about the little crappy guys called firewarriors. Admittedly Clausewitz who played my marines rolled more than above average (for example 17 shots with bolters against 3 crisis suits, 17 hits, 14 wounds....you can imagine the rest). The game ended 6 to 3 killpoints in the marine's favour.

Ok, I won't complain about failing dice rolls. That happens, it's unnerving but it happens.

Conclusion: This list should work I think. Bad luck away, I should have won the second game or got at least a draw. 3 railheads should suffice to cope with the land raiders and the missile pods should crack the drop pods. And as long as I can stay out of 12" range of the meltas I should be fine. The fireknives are really needed for anti-MEQ firepower.
One thing I lack are markerlights. But at the moment I see no way in getting them into this list. The 3 railheads are definitely needed, so there sadly is no place for the skyray. And I do not own pathfinders and the time is too short to paint a few of them. So I think I have to live with that.
The kroot are great as always. The firewarriors suck but are kept at a minimum at the moment. Taking only one mounted squad would let me down in objective based missions, so I think I have to live with them for the time being.
One thing I am thinking about is to change the heavy support choices. The alternative would be dropping one hammerhead and taking 2 broadsides with ASS and 2 shield drones. That would grant me with one more railgun. But the downside with this would be the impaired mobility and I think I would need at least 10 kroot to screen them from turn 2 attacks. Tau aren't that mobile though and having this static element would further decrease the mobility so I am not so fond of that.
Speaking of mobility, the sensor spines saved me more than one time. Staying away from the enemy as far as possible is key and this wargear lets you fly around more freely. I will take these, but I am not sure where to put them. Either on the hammerheads to grant them more flexibility or on the fishes for grabbing objectives. That needs to be tested.

September 3, 2009

as Managarm wrote in his last post we are taking part in a local tournament in the beginning of november. My first thought was playing my Eldar, but after taking a look at the participation list I decided to give my Chaos Daemons a try. I know they may be the harder army for competitive play, but there is only one additional Daemon player while there are a lot of Eldar and Marine player.

Coming to my list : I basically want to try my Slaanesh-Tzeentch list, with the addition of a Slaanesh Herold on Chariot and 4 fiends. Hopefully this, together with the few bolts on my Tzeentch stuff, gives my enough power to beat fast moving armies (which are really the bane on Daemon armies).
So here is my list :

I know that this loadout is really not able to take a lot of incoming firepower and lacks resilance. In the next weeks some playtesting has to take place to see what still needs to be tweaked to at least dampen this problem.

Hopfully there are some fellow Daemon players that have some comments suggestions on my list - I´d be thankful for any advice.